i cannot draw psychelocks to save my life so i modeled one as a drawing ref

when an obsessed orufrey person plays ace attorney for the first time in a while

so there's a lot of uncertainty and debate on when phoenix actually started suspecting kristoph, if he ever trusted him, etc. and like I do get it. phoenix used to be a hell of a trusting guy, that's so real.

but he also constantly carries around a magic rock that detects lies, and I have to believe that the first time kristoph said smth about how he's so sorry this all happened, like 27 psychelocks slammed down

Replaying Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, and I could really write a whole ass essay on how there was so much missed opportunity with some of the plot holes they just never answered.

I wonder, what were the black Psychelocks actually supposed to be about? I know in DD they establish that it’s a secret the person is keeping even from themselves, and that you have to be very, very, very careful about breaking them, lest you do more harm than good, but the first time we see them are Kristoph’s, and… I don’t know. That explanation doesn’t seem to fit with him. Like, he seemed perfectly aware of what he was doing and why he was doing it, he straight up told Phoenix point blank “I killed a man […] because I am an evil human being.” Like… he seemed to know what he was about all along. What could be possibly have been hiding from himself, especially with FIVE locks?

to this day i am still in shock that they never even explain what the hell kristoph’s black psychelocks were about. they just…. never come up again. and could have been something really interesting to dive into in aa5! but they just never explain them. and that just seems like bad or lazy writing to me, bc nothing that came out on the witness stand had to do with the psychelocks!

kaveh with black psychelocks cause recent fontaine storyline made me think of ace attorney again

we decided murder victims in the au have the memories of their death sealed away with a black psychelock

the reason why ace attorney 456 don't form a trilogy lies in the character development.

the plot threads from aa4 are never resolved. most of them aren't even picked back up or addressed. characters come and go. there's a distinct lack of cohesion.

like take for example the star wars prequel trilogy. that was a story. the story was about qui gon jinn, obi wan kenobi and anakin skywalker. regardless of your opinion of these movies, plot threads are carried through each of the three installments. the whole thing taken together reads like one big story, and each of the three movies could be seen as an "act", or chapter. sure, (spoiler ahead) qui gon does die in phantom menace, the first movie. but his influence is seen throughout the other two. his mentorship shines through in obi wan, and in anakin. he affects the plot even after he's gone.

but ace attorney 456 doesn't do any of that. it doesn't even do it the same way that 123 did. 1, 2, and 3 form a trilogy because, taken together, they are a story. the story is primarily about mia fey and maya fey, but there are other characters. yes, it is true that mia dies early on in the first game. but through channeling, she appears again. she affects the plot. whether you're talking game 1, 2, or 3, she is a part of the story. she is mentioned in cases in which she doesn't appear, like rfta, adding to the mystery and sense of continuity and cohesion. edgeworth's story ties into phoenix's, which ties into mia's, which ties into maya's. there are character arcs and growth. minor and supporting characters re-occur to show certain themes and move the plot along. taken together, it is a story.

456 is not a trilogy, i say, because apollo, trucy, and phoenix are really the only constants. there is certainly some growth there, but most of the time in the plot is not spent focusing on their growth, but rather on random gimmicks, such as perceive / mood matrix / psyche locks or whatever happens to be going on with the minor characters of the current case. once we see certain supporting characters, we really never see them again. plot threads such as those with the gavin brothers, the kitaki family, evidence forging, the mishams, the gramaryes and such are basically discarded after game 4, as if there was never really a plan for them to tie into anything in the first place. klavier does come back in game 5, yes, the gramaryes are mentioned again in game 6. but it feels... impromptu. like it's just fanservice. there's no real growth, nothing new is really learned by re-introducing these elements. it's bland. without shu takumi writing, the cohesiveness of the story really suffers. what you're left with is a series of cases all featuring apollo, but no real answer as to how apollo really grew other than "well, phoenix accepts him as a lawyer now". which, given what the first case of game 4 set up, is kind of a wet fart of an ending. they never discussed the bloody ace. what about the intrigue? what about the time apollo punched him in the face? how has apollo's opinion of phoenix really changed? how does trucy feel about it all? what happened with kristoph? what was behind the black psychelocks? helloooooooooooo!?

so, basically, as much as i love apollo as a character and i love his game, you can't call 4, 5, and 6 a trilogy so much as a collection of games. and that's ok, so long as we're all honest about it.

I for one would like to hear your telltale thoughts 👀👀

ok!!! i am going to try my hardest to explain what i think. but be warned that a lot of this is going to be speculative. but then again. it's aa4 🥴

putting this under the cut bc it's long. i think. idk i'm typing this on mobile

so! to start us off, aside from the obvious (murder lol /j), there's one really big thing the protagonist and kristoph have in common, which is that no one really knows what their motives are. The story’s protagonist says they loved the old man. The line “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!” (lol) uses hedging as well, so they’re not even sure of it themselves. Kristoph’s black psychelocks appear when you ask him why he killed zak gramarye, implying he’s buried the reason so deep in his subconscious he doesn’t even know it’s there in the first place. So that’s another thing they have in common: they’re not sure what their motives are for murder.

They do have something more (and this is where we get into speculative territory). There’s this underlying paranoia in both of the characters, that I like to think is part of their ~mysterious~ motive. More specifically, it’s a fear of being watched. Again, tell-tale’s protagonist with the eye, referenced after the line where they'd speculated it might had been the eye: "One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever." Then Kristoph’s suspicions that someone had watched him right back all those years after the Gramarye trial. Maybe kristoph killed zak gramarye because he was the most obvious connection to the case that would drag kristoph’s name through the mud. I mean, who knows what trucy’s told zak. She could easily connect kristoph and the diary page she’d given to her dad’s lawyer.

(unrelated but I also think phoenix’s trial could possibly be a step into getting rid of trucy as well. befriend her dad who is conveniently the lawyer you’d gotten disbarred via fake evidence, kill a man (most likely unplanned), pin it on him (most likely planned right after the unplanned thing), get a greenhorn attorney to do the dirty work for you and blame the guilty verdict on incompetence (happened by convenience), then you know. a girl is left vulnerable without a guardian. there’s some mvk-edgeworth shit that could go on here if this worked out. probably)

if we were to assume that it really was the eye that had caused the protagonist to kill the old man in the first place, then another key similarity about them and kristoph is that eyes were their undoing, what caused them to take a life, or in poe's words: rid themselves of the eye forever. In Kristoph's case, this 'eye' was two things. The first is phoenix keeping him close all these years, watching him, knowing all along that kristoph had been behind his disbarment all those years ago (in the drawing, this is represented by the camera, aka the pin on phoenix's beanie, which is why it's pulled over his eye, just to make it more like the old man, with his one big, creepy eye). The second is apollo, his powers that he'd discovered at the advent of kristoph's drawn-out fall, because his bracelet is primarily tied to SEEING those lies (seeing the tension, if we want to be fussy about it. and i will be. because we all know how i am about the bracelet)

sort of unrelated tangent, but my school had this "living museum" held by the theater club every year and let me tell you it was a Hit 😎 (our theater club was popular yeah) anyway. they had a different author every year, and the year they did poe they chose to show telltale heart through the pov of the eye and the heart. and idk. the heart just stuck with me. i'm p sure that the beating heart in the story was the protag's own anxious beating heart that they imagine to be the old man's instead. it's not an exact parallel, but the magatama was used in the investigation into phoenix's disbarment, and the magatama is connected to the heart, blah blah blah, so i used it in the drawing because the heart. because it looked cool B) now that i think about it, it's kind of ironic—it's a tell-tale heart, revealing information, betraying the protagonist's guilt, and ultimately the beating of it caused them to reveal their crimes in the finale. Kristoph's heart held secrets so close he'd buried it even from himself. that's saurrrrr funnay 🥴

the last thing i'd like to point out was that the reveal was done to three officers. and i just thought it was so fitting kristoph was before three people as well when his crimes were implicated. which is why trucy, apollo, and klavier were there in the background. originally, there was a second piece with their reactions to phoenix's dead body but i chose to scrap it because of kristoph's unfortunate angle. i still have the thumbnail, though! you can see it here!

anyway. look at this venn diagram feat the spongebob ep mermaidman and barnacleboy iv. you get it. probably

Apollo Justice is such a game.

Welcome to a seven year time gap!! Your client is actually disgraced (disgraced???) former Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright!! Your tutorial mentor man is a condescending bitch!! Apollo has zero control over any of the proceedings and in the end has to present falsified evidence to prove his mentor was the true murderer for reasons that won't become apparent until much, much later!!!

wanted to think more about what the fuck just happened?? Too bad!! Time for shenanigans to ensue in proper Ace Attorney fashion!!

Here's your assistant, the girl who gave you that forged evidence!! She's Phoenix Wright's daughter. Adopted. Here's a mystery man who looks nearly exactly like the man you just sent to prison for murder!!! Also Ema is back and she's PISSED! Klavier gets a proper intro and he's bitter as fuck!! Time to present panties twice in a row and turn this courthouse into a circus!! Your assistant holds herself at ransom just to explain the main mechanic of the game to you, despite having done this mechanic in the previous case. Your client is a lil punk and his fianceé is actually both way worse and more sympathetic than you first thought!! Hope you enjoyed having your hand held during the second trial day by this Klavier guy it will happen again.

Also, Klavier sent you tickets to his concert. Which Apollo had to pay for. What a weird series of events to get us to this concert. Lamiroir sure is pretty I hope nothing happens later to ruin her character!! Despite the murder weapon being a hand canon and the victim being a man who looks like a brick house, everyone stalwartly believes a tiny 14-year-old child performed this crime without so much as an injury to his name. Apollo watches a man die and is haunted by his final words. Surprise Lamiroir is acrually blind and accused the penis hair shark man to be the actual killer!! He hated your guts from moment one for some reason well now you know it's because he was the villain here. Have fun watching Klavier get lit on fire again and again at least 7 times. The most convoluted and unsatisfying breakdown and way to acquit your client yet.

Well, whatever. Final cases are supposed to be the best!! This Mason system seems weird but surely it has to explain some things. Phoenix Wright is our main narrator and all. Apollo actually gets his shit together enough to understand something is weird about all of this but he's got no other choice than to charge into it all headfirst. The most horrifying Ace Attorney character design with the most annoying tell to spot. Klavier fucking loses it and wuh-oh seven years ago time. Explain yourself, Phoenix Wright.

Upstart Klavier!! Zak spouting ominous bullshit that makes you realise he was planning to run no matter what!! BABY TRUCY!!! The last time we'll ever see Gumshoe in a mainline game... And, of course, as if you didn't already feel cornered by this game's lack of agency, it makes you present the forged evidence yourself. You helped get Phoenix disbarred. You had no other choice but to do so.

Anyway really fucking annoying investigation time!! Have fun figuring out which very specific order in which to do these snapshots!! Apollo and Trucy are siblings??? Whaaaaat?? BLACK PSYCHELOCKS??? What does it mean??? Phoenix has fully taken over the case it is no longer Apollo's show.

Back to the trial, your client could die but more importantly, Kristoph is back, baby!!! We're never going to learn what those psychelocks meant, you have to first stare at the scar on his hand making a face lol. Misham said he never met his client but Vera obviously met Kristoph in person so Drew either left her in a room with a questionable adult alone or was straight up lying on the stand about that. I mean Zak had the evidence that could clear his name in his pocket the whole time and chose to fucking dip instead of clearing himself of a murder charge so like same hat, but I digress. Klavier is having a TIME, Apollo doesn't get to say a damn thing as we close on the court, and wheeee that's it that's the game!! You get to choose the Not Guilty verdict yourself don't you just feel so included???

I want to make it clear that I love this game dearly, but woof it is. Such a ride.

I wanted to draw my silly ace attorney weird girl Amane thoughts but I'm so tired so your getting bad doodles instead.

I like to think this is after AA3 but before AA4 because I haven't played those games and I like the original trilogy cast a lot so it's being set there. I don't really got a story or anything but I like to think that due to Maya's court channeling shenanigans that attracted the attention of her cult and Amane is now here to scout out the situation basically. Amane did not expect the channeling stuff to actually be real and is having a bit of a time.

I think the first few cases are milgram prisoners (though unlike in Milgram they Probably didn't commit murder cause Ace Attorney) and then the last case is Amane herself, idk her cult pinned a murder on her or something.

Her Psychelocks are Black with maybe some light red accents and appear a lot, while Amane is lying to Pheonix about her intentions she also lies a lot to herself so she gets the black locks! I don't really have any other thoughts other than I think it's fun to imagine how everyone would interact and that the Maya/Amane parallels are real actually.

I admit. Part of me wonders if MK would somehow end up with Phoenix's Magatama before meeting with Macaque the second time and just being baffled when he suddenly sees all the Psych Locks.

O_O Anon, your mind!!! Just... MK with a magatama at any time in season two-!!! But gods, especially with Macaque. But like... say he gets it right before he learns to astral project and uses it to talk to Monkey King; Phoenix was playing with his magatama while having lunch at Pigsy's and accidentally left it on the counter, Pigsy recognizes it as that fidget toy the guy likes to mess with (Phoenix uses the magatama as a fidget toy, fight me, only not really I'm fragile, and also you can headcanon something else if you want), and MK gets roped into returning it. He starts to do so, Monkie Kid business comes up partway through, and sweet summer child MK forgets all about it until he astral projects to talk to Monkey King, whereupon he notices he has it in his pocket, gets it out while asking his teacher how vacation's going, and huh, weird, why did those locks show up? Ah, whatever, new lesson time, he'll return Phoenix's doodad later!!!

Except then the Lady Bone Demon happens and takes the wind out of MK's sails a good ol' chunk, but during the process he also gets his hand on the magatama at least once while she's spouting garbage and hey, more locks? WTF? Afterwards he decides to ask Tang about it, because that's what you do when you find confusing mystical relics and whatnot that need explaining! Tang identifies it as a magatama and reveals that, while inert stone on their own, gifted priests and priestesses can endow them with spiritual properties. Also, MK, return the Monkey King's lawyer's mystical artifact, dude, not cool.

So MK finally does, and Tang tags along, because they both assume Phoenix must have gotten the magatama from the Monkey King and are curious about both it and its properties. Phoenix is relieved to get his fidget toy/legal tool back, is annoyed that it took MK so long but also forgives him, because it's Phoenix and he's a nice guy (and has also done so much worse, don't eat evidence, kids). He also reveals that he didn't get the magatama from Monkey King at all - it was a gift from a priestess he's good friends with, and he received it years before he met Monkey King, and that it can be used to reveal lies.

"Okay, but what do the locks mean?"

"Oh, the psychelocks? The red ones show up when someone's actively telling you a lie, and the more locks there are, the more lies there are. Black locks indicate secrets someone's subconsciously keeping from themselves - nasty business, you didn't see any of those, did you?"

"No, but... wait," MK, the most precious boy, suddenly remembers the first psychelocks he saw, "If that's the case, why would Monkey King lie to me about having a good vacation if he's not?"

"A good what?!" good humour turns to indignation in a flash, "He told me he was away on business!!!"

"No, he's on vacation- unless that was the lie?"

So MK, Phoenix, and Tang are all now aware that Monkey King's lying about something, but no one's sure what it is and Phoenix does actually need his magatama for his job. Solution? They take a trip to see Maya to ask if she'll let MK borrow one.

As it turns out, Maya's not only happy to help, she knows who MK is! As a priestess who deals with ghosts (and probably demons and other spirits as well in this setting), she has an ear to the ground about the more mythical and supernatural goings-on of the city, so she's been following Monkie Kid exploits and hijinks for awhile (at least in regards to what's publicly available knowledge in these circles). MK receives his own magatama (yellow jade instead of green like Phoenix's), and gets told to just be careful about how often he uses it - magatamas don't tend to distinguish secrets being kept for good reasons versus ones being kept for malicious or bad reasons, they can only tell secrets are being kept. Also, if you use them too much too fast, the charge wears out and it takes awhile to build up again. But yeah, she's happy to help a nice kid who's helped the city so much!

(Also she and Phoenix would probably have some fantastic advice in regards to feeling like a fake or not good enough, but MK's not really talking about that so unfortunately they don't have a good reason to give it to him. >:'( )

Anyway! Fast foreward to Macaque showing up again, MK's played with his magatama a few times to figure out how it works and get the hang of it a little, but otherwise is mostly just keeping it in his pocket for now while he figures out what he wants to ask Monkey King. Only now now Macaque's in front of him, being all Macaque about stuff and starts telling the rest of his story, and MK just... sticks his hand in his pocket to try the magatama, because he's feeling scared and cornered and miserable and that is-

...wow that is a lot of psychelocks, like a lot a lot, like there's a couple dozen there at least and that's just the red ones, there's at least four black ones mixed in there and just... our number-one-focus-guy gets totally distracted from the crap Macaque's saying in pure shock at first, then cuts him off with a hesitant, "Uh... you got anything you want to talk about?"

"...what?"

"I just- that is a lot of lies, and it looks like you kinda have some major issues you may need to work through?" Puts up hands placatingly, accidentally pulling magatama out of his pocket as he does so and thus showing Macaque he has it.

Macaque: What's that- oh seriously!? Where'd you even get one of those?!

MK: A nice lady gave it to me for being a good helpful boy!

Macaque still gets in his head (because it's MK, and unfortunately he's still more loud than actually confident), but not quite as badly this time, and he's more questioning of how much of Macaque's story is true.

Personal opinion here: not much. Like... I'm sure that there are bits that are true, and that Macaque and Monkey King really did used to be friends in this universe, but as someone who's at least watched OSP's summarized Journey to the West series (the latest of which actually covers Macaque's section of the story), I think he's doing some inaccurate and slightly revisionist history. It's Macaque - he lies, he's prideful, and he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who willingly owns up to his mistakes, especially if he can blame things on others. I think his story of the Hero and the Warrior is how he wants to, and in some places partially believes, it went, because it absolves him of all responsibility in regards to what went down between him and Monkey King.

Honestly, can't blame him - if I had such good hearing that it made me nearly omniscient (at least in JttW), I'd be embarrassed and not want to talk about how I contributed to colossally screwing things up with my bestie either.

Wait, no, no, he's taking out his spite and bitterness on MK, who is a precious cinnamon roll who deserves only good things in life. Get wreck'd, Macaque, you're a cool, interesting character, but you deserve every bit of suffering that's heading your way as a result of all this!

Thanks for the ask!

Okay, I see your ship tierlist. Now I have an important question because I do not think I saw it, what is your opinion on zaknix? Consider this, dear stranger on the internet: Phoenix looked a little too happy to be manhandled by Zak... Just look at them...

So, I propose zaknix. If they got together and Zak did not get bottle'd by Kristoph, then Zak could truly become the world's first biological step-father. Your thoughts?

Dude when I first saw this in game I was like "Phoenix? 🧐 What's with that face?" So you know what. I'm down. Zak can get one of those world record plaques for being a Biological Stepfather

Anyways I Now believe Kristoph actually killed Zak because he was Jealous of Phoenix and Zak's Blossoming seeds of Passionate love. That's what the Black Psychelocks were for 💔 So Tragic

Winter, Psychelocks Edition! I wanted a break from writing so I drew this. Bad idea since chains suck but ah well.

For people who don't play Ace Attorney, Psychelocks are a thing that appear whenever a person is hiding something, there are two kinds, red means the person is aware there hiding something and black...means its a subconscious secret the person isn't aware of.

Uh the Black locks themselves I drew with the intention of being related to Winter's Personal and Familial Issues, since Winter is a character who lies a lot to himself about who he is and his family and what not, Imagine this taking place during the scene where Qibli and Winter talk about their families in Winter Turning, don't ask how Qibli is able to see this just assume he found something-

Also have my Icewing Sheep Winter.

I’d love director’s commentary on ‘object of your desire’ plz!

THANKS FOR THE ASK BESTIE <3

So HMMMMM that fic,,,, i dont have too much director's commentary on it, but i know that it was part of my sexy secrets series, and it was super last minute lmao. Because in the original sexy secrets fic, the one called 'hard to swallow', i originally had two black psychelocks on edgeworth along with the three regular red locks. I originally. DID NOT have any clue on what those could be, they were decided after the fic was posted and after people kept asking me about those locks LMAO Another thing i wanna make clear, i tend to always write Phoenix Wright with BPD, even if its not explicitly stated. Its just how i do it, and i think this fic is a prime example of that, with what happens after the phone call and all that, and phoenix's abandonment issues

But also, funny thing, is that i talked about this premise of the fic so much, the objectification bit of it all, that now my phone has some...interesting predictive texts sdmsda

Send me a ⭐star⭐ and ask about a fic/section/line you've been dying to hear about!